Q&A: Android Design Chief Details Google’s Mobile Future

By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently activated devices. It’s on phones and tablets made by four of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. And its reach isn’t slowing.

But with enormous growth comes problems, many of which Google knows quite well. App stores. Competitors. That dirty word: “fragmentation.” All of this bogs down Android during a critical phase of its development, just a few years since its initial launch.

Android needs a hero — someone who can unify the platform and work on the many weaknesses that critics attack, and even supportive users grumble about. And Matias Duarte, Android’s head of user experience, wants to take that role.

Under Duarte, Android launched Ice Cream Sandwich — aka Android 4.0 — late last year. It’s the team’s strongest effort yet in offering a robust, well-designed operating system that can measure up to the likes of Apple’s and Microsoft’s OS platforms. And at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Duarte launched the other half of the plan, the Android Design web site, which aims to make it easier for designers to create better, more user-friendly apps.

I sat down with Duarte at CES for an exclusive pre-launch interview, and picked his brain about Android, design in general, and competing operating systems like Windows Phone and webOS — the platform he architected for Palm years ago.

On Android Design

Wired: So tell me the philosophy behind launching the Android Design developer site. Is it specifically for what users are going to see in the interface, or is this more engineering focused?

Matias Duarte: It’s both what the user sees and how the application functions. Thus far, Android has had a lot of terrific developer API-level documentation. But we haven’t really had a style guide, we haven’t had interaction guidelines.

We haven’t, for example, given you a lot of guidance on how to migrate your application from a phone perhaps to a tablet. We’ve done so only by example, by showing you the way all the apps function in Ice Cream Sandwich. So we want to just kind of open up our studio’s doors, if you will. We want to show you how we think, and how we designed Ice Cream Sandwich to work. What all its principals and its rules and its conventions are so you don’t have to try and discover that yourself.

Wired: Is this a response to feedback you’ve been getting from the Android community?

Duarte: This is something that developers and designers are really hungry for. For any platform, it’s really important to understand what its conventions and patterns are. And so this is our chance — now that we’ve finished running the marathon to get the product out the door — to show them how they too can make apps that look and work as simply and as beautifully as the apps that we’ve made for Ice Cream Sandwich.

Wired: You know what this strikes me as? Like my Bible, the AP Style Guide, only for developers.

Duarte: That’s exactly what it is. There’s a lot of generally agreed-upon good interaction design practices, as well as universal mobile interaction practices. Still, every operating system does things a little differently, has its own conventions. The frameworks are different.

Wired: So does this mean — “rules?” There’s direction, and then there’s mandate.

Duarte: Well, it’s a slightly different situation because we don’t have an editor who’s going to yell at you if you’re out of line. In computer ecosystems, the public decides how successful applications will be after they hit the market. So within our style guide we have certain things that we think are absolutely how one should make an Android app. But there are other variables — examples in which code is good in some cases and bad in others. There it’s left up to you to make a judgment call as to which pattern you should adopt. There, we don’t have a hard and fast rule. But in either case, there’s nothing that we do to enforce that.

The new UI of Ice Cream Sandwich. Photo: Mike Isaac/Wired.com

On Tablets vs. Smartphones

Wired: I’m thinking of tablets versus smartphones specifically, and where Ice Cream Sandwich fits in. Is this going to help bridge that gap? This is something that — in terms of tablets — people have wanted for a long time.

Duarte: Yes, absolutely.

Sometimes you have to break the rules. But it always helps to know that you’re breaking the rules.

We have some portions of the guide that are specifically focused on that topic. How to design an app that takes advantage of the extra space on the tablet. How to design an app that will adapt and use a different type of user interface when it recognizes on a screen that is appropriately phone-size, and on a screen that’s tablet size.

So what we’ve launched — it’s not a document, it’s not a book, it’s a site. It’s a destination where we continuously add more detail to some of the documentation that we have, and some of it is very nitty-gritty.

To be honest, some of the most valuable content is in our design patterns. It’s our thinking that goes into certain conventions, or paradigms, practices. And in these we’ve started with a set of some of what we think are the most important or new patterns that we’ve introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich.

Wired: Do you expect this to bolster tablet apps in general?

Duarte: I think it should help tablet apps. Honestly, again, it wasn’t a particular goal of ours to focus on tablet apps because we don’t really think of tablet apps internally. But I think there’s no doubt that several sections of the guide do focus on some of the problems unique to larger screens, and so by nature that will help tablet apps.

On Manufacturers, the Market and Android as a Whole

Wired: It seems like this is sort of a real step towards fostering, sort of completing or making the Android market into something more attractive for in users, right?

Duarte: It is absolutely going to be a big benefit to end users and to developers, especially because developers won’t have to guess as much. They’ll understand what the conventions are. If they want to break them, they’ll know they’re breaking them. And sometimes you have to break the rules. But it always helps to know that you’re breaking the rules. Of course, that ultimately helps the end users. It creates an environment where more of the applications really have that cohesion and coherency that everyone really longs for.

Wired: So where do manufactures “skins” fit into all of this? Is that going to screw up anything up?

Duarte: Not really. What happens is there’s the basic Android system itself and then there’s the OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] skin that comes on top of that. A lot of that changes the look and feel of things.

Sometimes, OEMs customize pieces of the experience, like the launcher, or part of the notification system. And then very frequently what they do is add new features. They’ll add new capabilities that the carriers use to differentiate from one another. The important part is, none of that changes the basic paradigms and patterns.

Wired: This sounds great, but there’s something bugging me. Why did it take so long? Shouldn’t this have happened much sooner?

Duarte: This is a big effort. It was a top priority for me to get the team working on it as soon as I started at Google. So it has been in the hopper for quite some time.

First of all, it didn’t make sense to do this for Honeycomb [the previous release of Android 3.0] because it was very much an incremental step for us. And of course, we couldn’t finish Android Design before Ice Cream Sandwich was finished. If I could have managed it — you know, by altering the laws of physics — I would have loved to have launched both this and ICS at the same time.

The reality is we’re a very small team. And we’re working very, very hard. I’m just amazed and thrilled that we got this out as quickly as we did after ICS. In my mind, this is the second part of our Ice Cream Sandwich launch. As this site goes up, I can feel like it’s finished. Like ICS is truly complete.

Wired: Is this going to help independent, proprietary app stores? I’m thinking of carriers and manufacturers, specifically.

Duarte: It’s definitely going to help manufacturers as well. When we talk about third-party developers, manufacturers are included. They write apps for the platforms at the same time as skins, right? We’ve never given manufacturers — or anyone, for that matter — this much insight into how the system works or why parts of the system work this way.

On Upgrades and Fragmentation

Wired: Let’s talk about upgrades, and older versions of Android. I’m thinking of older devices, and specifically the problems HTC, Motorola and others have had in putting new versions of Android on their phones.

Duarte: A lot of those issues really are much more related to the hardware capabilities. Things like just how much memory you have. The reality is, right now Android is growing so quickly, it’s like it was back in the X86 days of PCs. When you got that 286 and were so excited! ‘Yes!’ And then Quake comes along and your 286 just couldn’t do the job. So right now, we have that issue people call ‘fragmentation,’ where some of the older hardware just won’t run the new OS. So trying to upgrade the OS is really difficult.

Remember when you got the new version of Windows, and you couldn’t run it on your PC? You just had to get a new computer, right? It’s something that happens at certain inflection points of computing, where the capabilities just grow so quickly that they outpace everything else.

Wired: But there’s the expectation that if I buy a phone or a tablet, I want to be able to upgrade to some degree, right? And I don’t want to have to necessarily throw my hardware out in a year or two.

Duarte: Well, the funny answer is you should probably have a conversation with Mr. Gordon Moore.

Wired: Touche. But still, I’m thinking of the pace of iteration from you guys. You put out new versions so fast. Why go that fast? Perhaps slowing down could cut some of the consumer frustration with fragmentation?

Duarte: It’s a funny thing. Part of the market is saying “Please slow down!” But there’s a huge other portion of the market demanding something new. The market is the thing that drives this fury for innovation. Every year our hardware capabilities shoot upward, and we get new ideas to create better software. And people want to give us money for it. So it’s kind of hard not to, right?

I think we all wish you could keep upgrading the same software onto the older hardware, but until you reach a plateau of computer power on mobile that we (arguably) see on desktops, you’re still going to have this frenzy for a few years.

Wired: Do you think the 18-month partnership cycle that Andy [Rubin] announced at I/O will do anything to remedy this?

Duarte: I think that will help. And it’s something we are very much committed to with our Nexus products. But, remember, it is an 18-month cycle. And part of the reason for that is that once you start looking beyond 18 months, it becomes very difficult.

Duarte worked on the ill-fated TouchPad in its early stages. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

On Other Platforms, and the Death of WebOS

Wired: I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the Windows Phone platform. It’s been on everyone’s lips at CES this year.

I wish HP the best of success with their new strategy. I really hope it can work for them. But I am saddened by their fortune so far.

Duarte: I’ve been in meetings all week, so I haven’t seen whatever frenzy is happening at CES with Windows this year. That said, I have to really commend Microsoft for what they did with Windows Phone 7, deciding that they needed a clean slate. They did something that was very audacious, visionary and very design forward. I think their product is a great product. I think Apple’s product is a great product. I think HP had a great product in webOS, but, yes, I am biased.

Wired: Ah, webOS, of course. It was like, your baby. And for all intents and purposes, they put it down. How do you feel about that?

Duarte: Yeah, I’m very sad that the tablet was not a success for HP. My team and I actually did some of the foundational work for HP’s tablet. And certainly many of the people on my former team and others I have relationships with are still working on it. And you know, I wish HP the best of success with their new strategy. I really hope it can work for them. But I am saddened by their fortune so far.

Duarte: Yeah, it’s tough. Sad. The upside is, I think there’s a lot of great mobile platform work being done out there right now. And that’s great, because that’s what drives the innovation. Right?

It’s very different I think than it was at the beginning of the PC era, when it was really just Apple and Microsoft. I think now the rate of change and the rate of innovation is so much faster, because you have a lot of people who are pushing mobile OS work. That’s what keeps people like me employed. And it’s a good thing.

On the Mobile Landscape and Beyond

Wired: Do you think that there’s an emphasis especially on software design today?

Duarte: It means the technology is maturing, no? It’s moved beyond hobbyist and now beyond commercial. There’s a point in time where if you wanted a car, you had to build it yourself. That was the hobbyist phase. Then it was a mass-consumer product. But you could get it in any color. You’ve got a black one, but it’s the exact same as the yellow one that your neighbor has. Seventy years of basically all cars share the same characteristics – they go from point A to point B, they have four wheels, what have you.

The technology has become commoditized. And what we’re seeing with information technology is that it’s approaching the same kind of thing. People are seeing that horizon coming for computing devices. They can see at a certain point, the capabilities for everything are going to be the same, and what’s going to matter is how those capabilities are executed. What the fashion is in which they’re executed. And that’s what’s going to drive people’s purchasing decisions. That’s why there’s this huge drive in system design.

Wired: That’s a scary thought for manufacturers. Why should I buy X’s phone if they’re all the same, you know?

Duarte: It’s really tough. Especially because these guys aren’t services people or applications people. Now we’re venturing into territory really beyond my comfort zone, but I imagine there’s going to be consolidation much like there was in other industries. When there’s this level of sea change. I don’t think you’re going to see all the same OEMs five, ten years from now.